Drawing Dragons

I love when a random shopping expedition turns into a treasure trove of wonderful finds.

Tonight I was playing taxi driver to my youngest daughter and then courier to my oldest and when I started out I expected to drop by an Art store when I had finished my errands but things took a turn and I ended up instead at the opposite end of the city with little time left to run the errand I'd promised myself. So, rather than browsing through a multitude of arts and craft supplies I found myself instead at a Chapters-Indigo store in an end of the city I don't often go to. While there I decided to browse through some of the art books which is usually one of my favorite stops when I'm at the book store. This time, I was rewarded with a fabulous selection of Fantasy art books that covered all kinds of Fairy, Mythical and dragon wonders.

This particular book is unique in that it takes the intricate and rather time consuming task of drawing the anatomy of dragons and breaks it down into very easy to follow and quick to master steps that literally break these gorgeous mythical creatures down to their bare essentials - as circles and oblongs and lines - oh my!

The artwork within this book is absolutely stunning -anyone who has even the slightest interest in these winged creatures would find this book gently encouraging them to pick up a pencil, grab a sheet of paper and try their hand at making one of these unique fellows spring to life before their eyes. Even the "artistically challenged", of which I don't believe a single person who claims to be such - can easily have a wonderful work of art spring from the page with nothing more than this book and a little time and patience.

Unlike some art instruction books that only touch on the more involved steps, this book takes you into detail not only with regards to drawing a number of different dragon styles, including Oriental dragons, but also gives you a good background on wing anatomy including side, folded and in flight views and how to accomplish them with realism, adding gender, front and side profiles of full dragons, achieving convincing mouths, teeth and eyes and also the important steps that deal with shading.

The author definitely didn't scrimp on information and this is, to-date, one of the most detailed, useful books on drawing dragons that I have come across. For the cover price of $19.50 I consider this book an incredibly well-priced and valuable resource for anyone who is interested in drawing dragons either for pleasure or to further their artistic skills and broaden their abilities.

Definitely an art instruction book that delivers much more than you would expect and does so in such a way that anyone, regardless of artistic merit, would likely be able to master with the right level of dedication. Excellent!

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